Right let's get to the bottom of this. Biologist group together organisms in things called clades. A clade is a family of organisms that share a common ancestor and all of its descendants. So mammals are a clade. This is vital in understanding evolution.
So to say that platypus is a bird is wrong as platypuses are not members of the clade we call birds. Birds belong to the clade we call dinosaurs. That is why we can say birds are a type of dinosaur. But playtpuses are direct descendants of fish and belong to a fish clade, Along with dolphins,...
... frogs and field shrews. A human is more closely related to a brown trout in this clade that a trout is related to a white shark. Humans and platypuses are fish. But they are not birds.
And it's your contention that therefore, mammals are fish?
From a cladistics point of view - yes, mammals are a type of fish.
It shows that if you go back far enough you can find a last common ancestor, to hominids, that is “a fish”, but does not mean humans are “a type of fish”.
In cladistic classification it means exactly that.
No, it means we can go back to a “last common ancestor” that was a fish, cladistics does not mean humans “are fish”. There is a difference between being a “thing” and having a very very distant ancestors that was “a thing”
Audrey. You do not know what you are talking about. A clade is precisely defines as a group that is composed of a common ancestor and all of its descendants. That means the clade of fish includes humans as descended from a common fish ancestor.
You admitted that they descended from a common “fish ancestor” but that does not make humans “fish” all it indicates is that they come from common fish ancestor. You seem to fail understand the reason cladistics developed, to get away from the historical “looks like” taxonomy process
This is tiring. A clade is a group of organisms that is composed of a common ancestor and all of its descendants., I have never mentioned "looks alike". The fish clade must contain all descendants - including humans. If it excludes humans it is not a fish clade anymore.
Kinda feels like the words “type of” and “fish” are being used in ways that don’t match up to colloquial English and that’s about as useful as saying “microcomputer” when referring to a laptop.
Yes. Science often describes things that do not match colloquial and folk descriptions.
Clades deal with relationships. They do not imply type-of. If they did, then every single vertebrate could be considered a type of fish. An ontology that describes giraffes and birds and frogs under "type of fish" conveys no useful information, except the ignorance of the person who uses it.
Along with literally every single other terrestrial vertebrate. Stop being a dingus.
Indeed. My point entirely.
My guy, speaking as someone who used to do phylogenetic analysis, you might think you are clever, but you're operating at a ChatGPT level of understanding, and being an obnoxious little turd in the process. Do you have a point other than that?
You know the answer.
Yeah, but it's my lunch break, and it's hot enough to make going outside unpleasant. Let me enjoy the enrichment that's been tossed into my enclosure.
Fair.
“I have cleverly redefined a term to make it all-inclusive, therefore your argument is invalid. I am very learned.”
The clade of fish is not all inclusive. It does not contain spiders, clams, oak trees, bumble bees and strawberry bushes.
You haven’t responded to the “stop being a dingus” part of his post (except, I suppose, that you’ve communicated a refusal).
I shall treat what you say as instructed and assume you have no credibility here.
(Dinguses are fish.)
There's actually a very good joke argument to be made that mammals are fish, in order to make a point about the challenges of applying scientific taxonomy to plain language animal categories. It's... interesting that someone has found that argument and seemingly missed both the joke and the point.
Summed up well elsewhere in the thread by this guy, I think.
“It is basically impossible to set bright lines creating clearly defined biological categories. This fact could not possibly have any application to questions of sex and gender.”
We can do so with gamete types and the sexes.
(Dingi?)
Dingodes?
Yeah, except basically nobody actually considers “fish” to be a clade, because it’s a paraphyletic group.
You can define fish as both a clade and a paraphyletic group. The problem with the latter is you have to make some subjective choices as to where you start your exclusions.
You can define fish as all woody trees, it doesn’t make you correct. “Fish” as a term long predates cladistics and it has an established meaning that doesn’t track a cladistic grouping.
Couldn't you also say that because X and Y share a clade that doesn't make X=Y ?
Phrased a different way, clades deal with comes-from. Grades deal with type-of. But don't give the pseudoscientific doofus any credit for knowing clades. His definition of dolphins as fish suggests he's using pre-Enlightenment grades, not clades.
God granted me the good sense to know when I'm toeing up to the Dunning Kruger line.
You could, but the larger issue is that fishes just don’t form a clade. They’re not a group consisting of a common ancestor and all of its descendants. Never have been.
OK. What's the phenotype for a "female" of this clade?
Speaking as a clade nerd - all vertebrates are, technically, lobe-finned fish. But someone conflating cladistics with sexual phenotypes is past apples and oranges and off into toasters and sequoias.
How have I "conflated cladistics with sexual phenotypes"????
I didn't know there were sovereign biologists.
Gotta look for the gold fringe on the genome
I regret I read as much as I did of this thread to understand the joke.
Admiralty double helixes?
Really something, huh?
im wondering how this....non-standard....classification system is useful when it produces results like "mammals are a type of fish"
Has anyone tormented @questauthority.bsky.social with this yet?
The line about a platypus being a bird was an obvious joke, Lenny. FFS man.
No. This is nonsense
Isn’t Olfactores the clade that both humans and fish belong to